This thread is for discussion of Pol Pot, Democratic Kampuchea (DK) and the implementation of Pol Pot-ist policies in modern conditions.
Achievements of Pol Pot-ism:
How the collective farms worked: The results of the collectives were divided equally according to need to families. Part of the production went to the use of the district's guerilla army and part was exchanged through the central organization for goods such as clothing, motor oil and salt. Each collective farm strove for self-sufficiency. The week consisted of ten days, the tenth being reserved for political education. The rest of the days were for work. Consumption as well as production was collectivized, with collective meals being introduced in 1977. There were no wages for work under Kampuchean communism and people received identical clothing through the collective, being given a simple black garment. In some collective farms, men and women were segregated and meetings between men and women were restricted. Extramarital relations were punished severely.
The long-term goal was for a sufficiently developed level of industrialization. There were Chinese and North Korean advisers in the country, but besides that Kampuchea was completely isolated
Treatment of the "New People": The ideological goal of the Communist Party was of course the creation of classless society (which was achieved in the Super Great Leap Forward), therefore the special features of the three million urban dwellers created by the urban capitalistic economy had to be destroyed. They performed the hardest physical labor, their families were broken up and their housing was of the lowest quality. The elite were now at the bottom of society. The goal was the destruction of the social structures maintained by these classes. By the end of the Pol Pot period these differences had vanished as full communism was achieved, showing the useless of Marxist concepts such as "stages" of communist society.
Education: Under Kampuchean Communist society and the institution of rigid egalitarianism there was no need for formal institutions of education, for the young educated themselves spontaneously in a natural social setting based on the unity of living and working; and there was no place for university educated intellectuals, whose specialized training necessarily created a sharp separation between mental and manual labor incongruous with the new order. Books and libraries were not used, and the educational system was rendered superfluous.
Betrayal: The Kampucean National United Front of National Salvation (KNUFNS) was installed in power by the Vietnamese. It consisted of traitors and revisionist elements, being founded in 1978. Sufficiently effective action against the Vietnamese agents operating in Kampuchea during the Pol Pot years was one flaw of DK. Pol Pot, with prescient knowledge, foresaw such treacherous and underhanded moves by the Vietnamese long ago, as indicated in the Black Paper and past Vietnamese attempts to amalgamate the Kampuchean state into the Vietnamese-controlled Indochina Federation. Pol Pot did not want to sell out the Khmer race to their hereditary enemy, instead hearkening back to the glorious Angkor dynasty of the Kampuchean past.
TL;DR Pol Pot implemented the world's first communist society, refuting Marxist notions of stages of development. From 1975 to 1979, the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was reality. Communism flourished under the aegis of the Angkar. The experience of Democratic Kampuchea should be an example to us all for the building of socialism as quickly as possible.
Pol Pot was the best chance we had to revert the doomed trend that Humanity follows. But no, muh socialism must have a "respectable" face. See where we are now how that worked.
Isaac Martinez
Exactly. There is an interesting correlation in the brutality used to construct and maintain such states, and their success. Pol Pot had the greatest successes, actually distributing according to need and abolishing classes, while the pussy """socialists""" of the West have gotten nowhere with their slavish adherence to bourgeois legality, reformism, "human rights" and other silly things.
Thomas Rogers
Good to see a Pol Pot thread here. Anyone who supports Vietnam needs a bullet to the head. Pol Pot built a classless society faster than Marx and Engels deemed possible, and it was crushed brutally by another “socialist” state. Look where Vietnam is today
Caleb Howard
Tbh I believed the Pol Pot is bad meme, le crazy anti-glasses utopistic man. But now that my understanding of the world is much larger and knowing the viciousness the revisionists are capable of, I see the Khmer Rouge experience as completely legitimate and not void of reasons.
Nathan Gray
Blanquism with Pol Pot characteristics is the patrician ideology
Andrew Allen
Imagine samefagging this hard
Matthew Ward
OP here, only these are my posts:
Christopher Williams
Pol Pot spent part of his youth in the milieu of Theravada Buddhism.
If you consider the ultimate ends of his program – identical clothing, identical housing, rigidly defined and repetitive routine, extreme anti-materialism – its sort of like a program to turn an entire nation into a Theravada Buddhist monastery.
The best test of competing socialisms is the good old right of conquest and in this regard the prahok eaters have always been wanting.
Owen Brown
Theravada traditionally accounts for the presence of both buddhist monks and buddhist lay people. Monks aren't allowed to use money, grow or even cook their own food, they have to go to the nearest town for alms. I'm all for buddhist socialism, where there's a strong community of renunciants who anyone can join to abandon all desire or whatever. But if Pot thought the entire country could be a monastery, without lay people i.e. the proletariat maintaining everything in the background, he was as nuts as everyone thinks. Maybe something more mahayana could mesh better with socialism, where everyone's a monk and the country is one huge monastery, but the rules laxer than theravada's, at least as lax as necessary to allow socialism to operate without impedement
Noah Thomas
He's one of the most hilariously disgusting, evil, and moronic political leaders in human history. He should honestly be considered the left's moral equivalent of Hitler.
When it comes to authoritarian socialism I'm honestly sympathetic to some Trotskyist ideas, but there's really no way to excuse anything Pol Pot did.
When you have no actual rebuttals and you just moralize
Luke Sullivan
NazBuddha Gang
Henry Perry
Take your bullshit bourgeois moral equivalencies somewhere else.
Aiden Adams
He killed a quarter of his population. Half of Cambodians who lived through the Khmer Rouge era exhibit symptoms of PTSD. Education and healthcare in Cambodia still have not reached the levels they were at before the Khmer Rouge.
Pointing this out isn't "bourgeois." What is bourgeois is your callous attitude about it, as if none of that suffering matters because of your ideological bullshit. Objecting to "moralizing" is bourgeois because it demonstrates that you don't care about the actual people. You are bourgeois, you are an enemy of the people, and you are for exploitation by an elite that masquerades as communist, even though it is anything but. You are a counterrevolutionary. Off yourselves, porky.
Robert Rivera
False. Less than a million people died (around 700,000), not all of which were the fault of Pol Pot and the DK. Just look at the demographic data. Bourgeois atrocity propaganda and/or Vietnamese smear attacks It really makes me think how a country, once placed back under the yoke of imperialism, can’t recover from the position imperialism placed it under before it was liberated by the Khmer Rouge. The contradictions of capitalism have reemerged and Cambodia has regressed from the advanced communist society of 75-79. It is bourgeois. You are attacking one of the most advanced communist states this planet has seen, therefore you are automatically serving forces of reaction by peddling lies about it, as if none of that suffering matters because of your ideological bullshit. Boo hoo, muh poor exploiters and wreckers! The suffering of kulaks and the Whites didn’t matter in Russia, and neither did the scum which died in Kampuchea. Good riddance they’re dead. The fact that you will throw away your adherence to communism for moral reasons is as bourgeois as fuck. I don’t care how many have to suffer, bleed and die for communism to come about and if you aren’t in accordance with that, you’re bourgeois. Counterrevolutionary? I am counterrevolutionary for observing that Pol Pot was instrumental in building a classless society adhering to the principle of “from each according to ability, to each according to his need”? You are the reactionary if you don’t realize the profound achievements of the Kampuchean people under the guidance of the Angkar.
You're hilariously full of shit. The actual estimate is 1.87 million deaths.
I lived in Phnom Penh for a while. I think you're autistic, honestly.
Jason Ramirez
Demographic data disagrees with your lies. There is a coordinated effort by the international capitalist class to smear and hide the achievements of Democratic Kampuchea – THE most advanced communist revolution that this world has ever seen so far. From 1975 to 1979 it was the true vanguard of world communism.
William Thomas
Imagine saying shit like this and still having the audacity to call Vietnam (even before Doi Moi) revisionist.
Daily reminder that Pol Pot joined Ronald Reagan's Cambodian government in exile along with the crown prince after he was deposed.
Logan Peterson
stagism is peak revisionism though
Julian Stewart
Now this is Poe's Law
Jace Rivera
We know, kulak
Ayden Flores
...
Bentley Nguyen
MADE BY NAZBOL GANG
Jason Richardson
it wuz reel in muh mind.
Let’s not forget that the KCP was not unfortunately a monolithic party, from 1975 to 1978 it was wracked with internal struggles. Nine times the traitors tried to oust Pol Pot and strangle the revolution its cradle. They even removed Pol Pot from April to October 1976. Of course, the day of retribution arrived and Pol Pot set about liquidating the traitors and collaborators. The treachery ran so deep that hundreds were arrested, tortured and killed. Tuol Sleng was set up, looking at the composition of the18,000 who died, not a single death was unwarranted. The pseudo-communist factions needed to go for their continuing hindrance of the revolutionary process and milquetoast bourgeois views. Of course, the treason reached such heights that the East Zone rose against Pol Pot. Even though it was the best Zone in DK, the East Command plotted and simmered in anger, before rising in warfare against Pol Pot in 1978. Simply put, the revolt was crushed and the traitors eliminated. New People class-traitors were killed, rebellious party cadres, Vietnamese moles and the pro-Vietnamese, all killed. Vickery estimates that 100,000 were killed in the pacification, and as you have now learned, for good reason. It was no genocide, it was a war against wreckers
Of course the treasonous sections of the KCP which survived began to plot against Pol Pot and were later installed as puppets of the Vietnamese, destroying the vanguard of the world revolution.
Caleb Torres
...
Julian Carter
WTF I HATE STALIN NOW
Julian Baker
Food for thought about Kampuchea then I'll stfu about it
Vietcong weren't revisionist, just bourgeois. Even the Burger and Limey hippies liked them. It's pretty cracked of a movement when privileged Rich college screwbalslike your state. Those in poverty in the U.S. had no choice but to fight those fucks instead of shitting up university campuses with their fake, mommy and daddy funded "protests" and "sex and drugs". Hail the Kent State police, for they are legion.
Owen Morgan
just when you think the takes couldn't get any worse
Lucas Perry
Stalin never served on an American puppet government.
Hunter Carter
There is zero proof that Pol Pot was an American puppet, especially given the fact that he overthrew an imperialist backed government and killed most of its officials upon coming to power. Nice conspiracy theories
Aaron Myers
Top fucking kek. He served on an American-backed puppet government with the fucking king.
I am the definition of devil's advocate. you should know this by now.
Ian Ward
Nobody recognizes you.
Zachary Morgan
Is it really surprising that he had some relations with the king? For a year after the Khmer Rouge came to power, Kampuchea was still considered a kingdom with Sihanouk as the formal head of state. It became Democratic Kampuchea only in 1976 when Khieu Samphan became head of state. At least Sihanouk wasn't a imperialist-puppet like Lon Nol. He refused membership in SEATO, broke off diplomatic relations with the US in 1965 and signed cooperation agreements with China and the USSR. No wonder the US got butthurt and started funding Khmer Serei. Sihanouk was based. Having the backing of America can be a good thing – just look at Rojava. Their opposition to the Vietnamese happened to align, this doesn't change the fact that Pol Pot founded a genuine communist society
Brandon Myers
To be fair, comparing Rojava to Pol Pot is unfair. Rojava aims to regress Syria into a pastoral-nomadic tribal clusterfuck, burying forever the remnants of Assyrian civilization. Pol Pot was creating a communist society to revive the glorious Khmer civilization.
Benjamin Ramirez
As it should be
Cooper Torres
Fucking This
Luke Bell
The fact that Rojava has existed for years now and they haven’t abolished markets, money, religion or even classes is extremely telling. Rojava is reactionary to the core
Ayden Harris
For anyone claiming to be a communist it is. Holy fuck, of all the allies to choose, he chose a fucking aristocrat and Ronald Reagan.
How does someone who would have believe that he is a leftist even think of saying that about an aristocrat?
Jonathan Wright
Are these supposed to be arguments?
Easton King
plus a lot of them are fembots too. NPCs, etc.
Blake Powell
though I'm against abolishing religion. abolishing atheism is more my speed.
"Communism is when you commit large-scale genocide and collaborate with the UK and USA against communists." - Friedrich Engels, Utopian and Scientific Socialism
Elijah Hill
Marx and Engels would have applauded the achievements of the Khmer Rouge and revised their own theories in light of its transcendence of petty constructs such as "higher" or "lower" stages of communism.
